Inbreeding leads to:

Increased homozygosity.

Increased expression of recessive traits.

Decreased expression of dominant traits.

Increased heterozygosity.

An allele:

Is one of possibly many variations of a gene.

Can be recessive.

Can be dominant.

Is a synonym of “gene.”

A gene:

Is a unit of heredity that is transferred from parent to offspring.

Controls the transmission and expression of one or more traits.

Can code for multiple and otherwise unrelated phenotypic effects.

Codes only for a single discernible phenotypic effect.

Can be dominant or recessive.

If an individual has inherited the same allele for a gene from both parents, they are said to be:

Homozygous.

Hemizygous, Nullizygous, Allozygous, Heterozygous.

Phenotype refers to:

The set of observable characteristics of an individual.

The morphology, behavior, and development of an individual.

The genetic makeup of an individual.

Both expressed and unexpressed genetic variation.

Which of the following trait types can “breed true?” To “breed true” means that two organisms with a particular heritable phenotype produce only offspring with that same phenotype.

Recessive traits. (e.g. brown coloring, rough coats, tri-color, etc.)

Dominant traits. (e.g. black coloring, smooth coats, etc.)

Heterozygous Semi-Dominant traits. (e.g. Merle, Bobtail, Chinese Crested Hairless, German Shepherd Panda, etc.)

Heterozygous Co-Dominant traits. (e.g. AB blood type, red-white Roan in horses, etc.)

What mode of inheritance do the following traits have in common: Merle, Bobtail, Harlequin, Panda (German Shepherds), Hairlessness (Xolo, Chinese Crested, etc.) ?

They are Lethal.  Lethal genes are capable of causing death.

They are all semi-dominant. When the heterozygote has a different, intermediate phenotype compared to the homozygous dominant or homozygous recessive individuals, it is said to be “semi-dominant.”

They are all recessive.

They are all dominant.

They are sex-linked.

They are all co-dominant.

Inspired by the Genetics Survey on Gene Expression and an inquiry from the CanineGenetics-L yahoo group, I figure it might be fun to post an occasional genetics quiz to reinforce some of the concepts covered on this blog and provoke discussion of the sorts of genetics knowledge that is most helpful to dog enthusiasts.

The results are not tracked, it’s completely anonymous, and the correct answers will be revealed tomorrow. I tried several automated quiz plugins but they are a pain, so we’ll just go old school.  If you run across an answer that you want to discuss, do leave a comment.

February is the month of sweethearts, so there’s no better time to bone up on what happens when love is in the air and dogs are swapping genes. For the inaugural monthly quiz, here are some questions long time readers of the blog should be able to answer.

Multiple Correct Answers are accepted and often required.

Inbreeding leads to:

Increased homozygosity.

Increased expression of recessive traits.

Decreased expression of dominant traits.

Increased heterozygosity.

An allele:

Is one of possibly many variations of a gene.

Can be recessive.

Can be dominant.

Is a synonym of “gene.”

A gene:

Is a unit of heredity that is transferred from parent to offspring.

Controls the transmission and expression of one or more traits.

Can code for multiple and otherwise unrelated phenotypic effects.

Codes only for a single discernible phenotypic effect.

Can be dominant or recessive.

If an individual has inherited the same allele for a gene from both parents, they are said to be:

Heterozygous.

Homozygous.

Hemizygous.

Nullizygous.

Allozygous.

Heterozygous.

Phenotype refers to:

The set of observable characteristics of an individual.

The morphology, behavior, and development of an individual.

The genetic makeup of an individual.

Both expressed and unexpressed genetic variation.

Which of the following trait types can “breed true?” To “breed true” means that two organisms with a particular heritable phenotype produce only offspring with that same phenotype.

Recessive traits. (e.g. brown coloring, rough coats, tri-color, etc.)

Dominant traits. (e.g. black coloring, smooth coats, etc.)

Heterozygous Semi-Dominant traits. (e.g. Merle, Bobtail, Chinese Crested Hairless, German Shepherd Panda, etc.)

Heterozygous Co-Dominant traits. (e.g. AB blood type, red-white Roan in horses, etc.)

What mode of inheritance do the following traits have in common: Merle, Bobtail, Harlequin, Panda (German Shepherds), Hairlessness (Xolo, Chinese Crested, etc.) ?

They are Lethal.  Lethal genes are capable of causing death.

They are all semi-dominant. When the heterozygote has a different, intermediate phenotype compared to the homozygous dominant or homozygous recessive individuals, it is said to be “semi-dominant.”

They are all recessive.

They are all dominant.

They are sex-linked.

They are all co-dominant.

Answers Here

Champis, the Swedish herding rabbit.

Move over Barbie Collies, there’s a new herder in town that is adorably small, has perfect ear set and has a decidedly fluffy butt.  And he’s not a show Border Collie from Australia, he’s a rabbit from Sweden.

Nils-Eric and Greta employ their granddaughter Hanna’s rabbit named “Champis” on their farm in Käl, Sweden to help herd their sheep. It appears that Champis learned to herd sheep–complete with heading, heeling, eye, and clapping behaviors–from their Border Collie, but this video shows that Champis gets along just fine all by himself and the sheep respect his authority.

"With a rabbit like Champis, who needs a dog?"

Frankly, I’m amazed that the rabbit seems to know what the shepherd wants, just like the Border Collies do; for example, he runs to cut the sheep off from re-entering the barn and he even makes a valiant effort to bring back a sheep that has gone stray, and he’s perfectly willing to stare down a bull headed woolly.

..

Read the continuing adventures of Champis the herding rabbit (named after a Swedish soft drink) and his Border Collie friends “Gimmie” and “Fame” on the Gårdsbackens blogg.

The retina of a Briard with an inherited blindness disease that was later cured with gene therapy.

Back in 2001, scientists first treated inherited blindness in dogs using gene therapy. In that instance it was Congenital Stationary Night Blindness which manifests in Briards and is analogous to Leber congenital amaurosis in humans, both defects in the RPE65 gene.

Dogs blinded by an inherited retinal degenerative disease had their vision restored after treatment with genes from healthy dogs, marking the first successful gene therapy for blindness in a large animal. The treatment offers hope for humans with a similar condition.
…
“We have shown that gene therapy can restore vision in dogs with one of the most clinically severe retinal degenerations,” says Acland, a research veterinarian at Cornell’s James A. Baker Institute for Animal Health.
…
The RPE cell layer in the eyes of humans, dogs and other mammals supports the retina by providing nourishment and removing waste products while supplying vitamin A to the photoreceptors. Puppies and human infants with defective RPE65 genes produce a mutant form of the RPE65 protein, resulting in early vision loss, degeneration of the retinas and near-total blindness later in life.

The canine form of this retinal degenerative disease has been found only in the briard dog breed. In the gene therapy experiments, researchers used RPE65 genes that were cloned from dogs without the disease, together with a viral vector (recombinant adeno-associated virus, or AAV) to carry the normal dogs’ DNA. They injected the combination into the subretinal space of the eyes of 3-month-old briard-beagle mix dogs that were known to have the defective RPE65 gene and had been blind since birth. Within six weeks, the treated eyes were producing the correct form of RPE65 protein. By three months, a series of tests (electroretinography, pupillometry and obstacle-avoidance tests in a dimly lit room) demonstrated that vision was restored to the treated eyes.

In 2010, the same team successfully returned function to the cones of previously blind dogs affected by a form of blindness called Achromatopsia.

Now, scientists have again used gene therapy to prevent and reverse another form of blindness in dogs and humans called X-linked Retinitis Pigmentosa associated with a mutation in the RPGR gene.

The disease in humans and dogs is caused by defects in the RPGR gene and results in early, severe and progressive vision loss. It is one of the most common inherited forms of retinal degeneration in man.

“Every single abnormal feature that defines the disease in the dogs was corrected following treatment,” said lead author William Beltran, assistant professor of ophthalmology at Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine.

“We were thrilled,” said senior author Gustavo Aguirre, professor of medical genetics and ophthalmology at Penn Vet. “The treated cells were completely normal, and this effect resulted from introducing the normal version of the human gene into the diseased photoreceptor cells.”

This is exciting for dog owners because there are numerous breeds that have epidemic levels of eye disease and the proliferation of these advancements could lead to routine treatments that would treat or cure the disease in individuals.

There’s still a barrier to a permanent cure for breeds that would extend to the offspring of treated individuals.  Treated dogs only receive the working DNA in the somatic cells at the location of the viral vector.  Somatic cells are all the cells in the body besides those directly involved in producing offspring.  If there’s a mutation in a somatic “body” cell, it will not be passed on to future generations.

The cells that produce the sperm and egg are called germline cells and they are not necessarily amenable to the same gene therapy techniques that work on individual somatic cells.  You can effectively cure the blindness by providing a working copy of the genes within the eye, but other cells in the body will not have the new gene and the germline cells will not produce sperm or eggs that benefit from the disease-free allele either.

This effect is called the Weismann barrier, which is the theory that genetic information moves only in one direction, from germline cells to somatic cells.  This is why when you get an x-ray the tech is more concerned with lead shielding your private parts than the rest of your body because germline mutations have serious consequences for your offspring and germline cells are theoretically immortal (they can replicate for the entire life of the organism) whereas somatic cells only divide 30-50 times.

If the Weismann barrier can be broken, it’s theoretically possible for the treatment of eye cells to result in genetic change in somatic cells and thus in the offspring.

There’s also the potential to apply gene therapy techniques to germline cells (such as the sperm or egg) directly and this would enable genetic engineering that would last over generations.  Scientists have already created lasting changes in organisms that do not differentiate somatic-germline cells (like plants: thus we have GMOs), but I’m not aware of any ongoing progress on germline gene therapy and there are currently institutional barriers against work in that area given the potential ethical implications of genetic engineering.  Scientists have successfully inserted synthetic chromosomes into mice that were heritable but the current focus in treatment of human offspring disease is to perform IVF and genetically profile the blastocysts before implantation.

So this is good news for dogs, and possibly the beginning of an amazing new world of animal husbandry when genetic engineering will allow for some truly incredible health advancements and possibly some radical experimentation.

3 minutes a day in a centrifuge was part of the failed biosensor "super dog" program.

Dog culture is lazy and unoriginal, and profoundly stagnant. The desire for easy answers, simplistic how-tos and formulas for success is rampant. Just do this one simple thing! 

Breeders eschew complexity, uncertainty, and experimentation. They fear change and embrace unproven tradition on face value.  We do it this way because we’ve always done it this way.

Reason gives way to mimicry, and that is the true mark of conformation: not in the dogs keeping to a written standard but in breeders kowtowing to the unwritten rites and rituals to fit in.

One cherished ritual that can be found proudly advertised on numerous breeder websites (usually after the “Our Boys” and “Our Girls” links) as a sign of their reputable status and deep commitment to superior dogs is the adoption of the “Bio-Sensor” program as the one true path™ to dog raising.

In only 15-25 seconds a day for only 14 days in a dog’s life you will realize “life long lasting effects:” “improve performance,” “respond maximally,” “attain sexual maturity sooner,” “resist cancer and infectious disease,” “withstand terminal starvation,” achieve “psychological superiority,” “stronger heart beats,” “stronger adrenal glands,” and “improved cardio vascular performance!”

That’s less than 6 total minutes of work to make a super dog!  AMAZING!

The brains over at the sci-ence blog have come up with a handy chart to recognize quackery, the relevant parts of which I’ve reproduced here.  Their instructions:

“If you come upon a treatment or product that seems too good to be true, consult this handy guide to finding pseudoscience, scams, and quack medicine. Remember, it only takes one match to be considered suspect! Be safe, and be skeptical!”

This widely tauted “Bio Sensor” a.k.a “Super Dog” a.k.a “Early Neurological Stimulation” program has many warning signs of quack science.

Let’s start with who is peddling this pseudoscience:  Dr. Carmen a.k.a Carmelo Battaglia, Board of Directors of the American Kennel Club.

Dr. Carmen L. Battaglia, of Roswell, Georgia, owns and breeds German Shepherd Dogs and is Delegate and Past President of the German Shepherd Dog Club of America. Carmen has chaired the Committee for the Future and Business/Planning Committee and as a former AKC Director, served as Board liaison for the Health, Parent Club, HEC and By-Laws Delegates committees. He has published articles on breeding and legislation as well as several award-winning books. He also serves as an AKC expert witness in dog legislation cases and has written county dog legislation which resulted in the model that is used in several states. Carmen possesses a Doctorate from Florida State University and has been Assistant Dean at Emory University and Regional Administrator at the US Department of Education. He is also the President of Atlanta Student Aid (financial aid consulting Firm) as well as the past president/owner of three post secondary schools which were located in two states.

You’ll remember Dr. Battaglia from his resurrection of Lloyd Brackett and his infamous “Brackett’s Formula.”  Dr. Battaglia gives lectures on cruise ships to up-and-coming brown-nosers in the AKC hierarchy who want to buy the secret knowledge and pay the right gate keepers to fast track show success.  He’s the closest thing the AKC community has to a celebrity doctor.

But don’t get too comfortable with the idea that he’s a medical doctor, he isn’t.  He’s a Ph.D. doctor, which he readily advertises at the end of his publications:

Carmen L Battaglia holds a Ph.D. and Masters Degree from Florida State University. As an AKC judge, researcher and writer, he has been a leader in promotion of breeding better dogs and has written many articles and several books.

Dr. Battaglia is also a popular TV and radio talk show speaker. His seminars on breeding dogs, selecting sires and choosing puppies have been well received by the breed clubs all over the country. Those interested in learning more about his seminars should contact him directly.

Visit his website at http://www.breedingbetterdogs.com

What he doesn’t advertise anywhere that I’ve found despite an extensive search is what subjects his degrees are in.  So I contacted the Curriculum Publications Coordinator at Florida State University and found out the unpublished truth:  B.A. Psychology 1958, M.S. Social Welfare 1960, PhD Joint Doctoral Program in Criminology Corrections and Sociology 1968.

So by way of education, Dr. Battaglia is more equipped to run a prison than a breeding program.  His dissertation was titled “Deviant behavior of parolees and the decision-making process of parole supervisors.”

The next indicator that “Bio-Sensor” is quack science is because it’s being SOLD as a how-to guide to success without having been vetted in any way by scientists in peer reviewed publications resulting from studies done according to the scientific method.

Dr. Battaglia sells his program along with breeding and puppy selection advice as part of his self-help for dog breeding commercial venture.  You can buy books, videos, DVDs, and subscribe to his newsletter and attend his lectures.

In accordance with yet another quackery red flag, Dr. Battaglia is pitching program that offers medical benefits but he (nor anyone else) has no peer-reviewed journal articles on his protocol. And it’s not for lack of trying.  If you visit his website you will find a link to request his so far unpublished journal article.  When you do so, you will be e-mailed a copy of an extended version of his Bio-Sensor article spruced up to look like an actual experiment with “Methods and Materials” and everything.

It appears from the file that Dr. Battaglia has attempted to get this article published since at least 2007, but he will warn you that the article is still under intense review and thus you can not share it.

This wouldn’t be the first time that the “Bio Sensor” program has been used to sell a self-help program, however, as Dr. Battaglia collaborated with Stanley Coren–king of marketing shoddy dog science to pet owners in book form–who included the information in his book Why Does My Dog Act That Way?

Battaglia and Coren’s considerable influence on the dog fancy combined with Battaglia offering the super simplified how-to instructions for achiving super dog success for free on his website as a teaser for his suite of videos, books, and lectures the “Early Neurological Stimulation” program has saturated the hobby pet breeder culture.  Breeder testimonials and reprints of the method are everywhere.

Diligently following Dr. Battaglia’s advice, there are breeders out there inbreeding their lines and producing singleton puppies who none-the-less credit Brackett’s Formula and the amazing Bio-Sensor program for giving them a super puppy abounding with exceptional qualities.

Apparently I’m part of a silent minority who have even questioned this program’s merits and the academic bona fides of the man who peddles it from coast to coast, as I’ve found no online criticism of the methods and not even one other soul who questioned what Dr. Battaglia’s field of study was until I sent out feelers over a year ago.

But it’s clear to me that Bio-Sensor is being marketed just like quack science is marketed, by people who have a vested financial interest in selling easy answers and quick fixes to gullible pet breeders who spend fortunes trying to rectify their ignorance with short cuts and feel-good nonsense.

In a quadrumvirate of quackery, Battaglia also uses his “Breeding Better Dogs” website to sell Japanese (think Eastern medicine) magic magnetic shoe inserts and magic magnetic dog beds that are “combined with magnetic technology, another ancient principle” and “enhance the body’s energy flow to allow healing and proper metabolism.”  This is a man perfectly willing to market quack science as a miracle product for profit.

So far I’ve shown that Bio-Sensor looks like a duck, and in a future post I’ll show you how it quacks like a duck as well.

The breed is believed to be the creation of one man, Heinrich Essig, who was a dog dealer and traveling salesman; his claimed formula was Landseer Newfoundland x Saint Bernard, followed by more Saint Bernards and a Pyrenean Mountain Dog with the goal being a large white dog that was fashionable at the time.  After Essig’s death in 1889 his nephew had the inspiration to promote the breed as a lion-like mascot for the town of Leonberg and established the final conformation of the dogs as having a lion-like rough coat with reddish-brown coloration, a black mask and black sable accents.  Like most breeds, the origin mythology is poorly documented and stud books were not kept in earnest on the breed for several decades after its establishment.

As a German breed, the Leonberger was severely affected by both World Wars: only 5 known breeding dogs survived the first war and only 8 pedigreed dogs emerged from the second.  Two severe bottlenecks like this are not conducive to preserve genetic diversity within a closed population.

That is why I was surprised to find that the 5 Leonbergers which were DNA tested as part of a study analyzing the genetic composition of Alaskan Sled Dogs showed that they had excess heterozyosity compared to Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. Of 141 breeds tested over 96 genetic marker sites, there were only 9 purebred breeds found to be surplus heterozygous and most of those are only marginally so.

Note, this is not a measure of gross diversity in the breed, it’s a measure of which way the breed is being pushed genetically, either toward more conformity and homozygosity or toward more diversity and heterozygosity.

Genetic rescue requires a push toward heterozygosity before reaching a new equilibrium with the new alleles.

Inbred or Outcrossed? Bars that extend to the left indicate excess heterozygosity compared to the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (red line), suggesting active selection for allele diversity (i.e. outcrossing). The Leonberger is one of the most heterozygous breeds tested.

Here is the actual data represented in the chart.  The purposely out-crossed hybrid sled dogs were found to be 20% more diverse than equilibrium and the Leonberger was second only to the Puli with over 10% excess heterozyosity.

I’ve only found one documented outcross on the Leonberger books: In 1954 a Leonberger stud Arko von Leonberg with a COI of 20% was bred to a Newfoundland dam Grisette von Bruckberg and one female from that litter, Alma von Rossbach, would cement herself into the Leonberger gene pool.

More recently European kennel clubs have registered Leonbergers with full breeding rights certificates “titre initial” (as opposed to a 3 generation provisional appendix registration “registre initial”) which are given after a number of criteria are met; typically an evaluation against the breed standard or significant show success, health testing, and perhaps even temperament evaluations.  These dogs are believed to be pure-blooded Leonbergers instead of hybrid dogs which would normally take 3 generations to be admitted into the gene pool with full breeding rights and purebred status in registries that allow new blood.  Sometimes they come with full pedigree and while the kennel club would void the known pedigree and perhaps calculate the COI of offspring as 0%, it’s not clear that either the registre initial or titre initial schemes are a source of new Leonberger blood.

Another possible source of Leonberger diversity lies in the history of Germany and the East after the wars.  The Leonberger isn’t just a dog of the West and so it existed on both sides of the Iron Curtain.  It is unknown and undocumented what sorts of possible crosses came into the breed during the Cold War before the reunification of Germany and the resumption of normal trade across Europe.

The last and least verifiable source of unexpected diversity would be intentional and unintentional pedigree fraud or error.  It’s possible that some breeders when faced with a line that was not producing what they wanted or suffering from inbred disease or infertility decided to outcross, or an accidental litter proved sufficiently virtuous to register and the breeder either could not or did not choose to disclose this.

There’s also the possibility that I simply haven’t accounted for some factors which would have preserved heterozygosity in Leonbergers and that the bottlenecks did not have the expected effects on the gene pool.  Certainly more questions than answers, but what an intriguing mystery it is.

This is not an apple, it's a pipe.

It is the nature of Evolution and the human mind to repurpose what exists into what could be: to innovate, experiment, and sometimes to improve. The fate of such change is almost always failure–99.9 % of all species to ever have lived are extinct and 95% of new businesses fail within 5 years–but occasionally unplanned, unimagined, and even unwanted uses and abilities surpass the ability, potential, or popularity of the original.

This isn’t a simple re-purposing, such as using an apple or corncob to create a pipe; such uses don’t surpass the original nor are they particularly exemplary in their new form.  Though I couldn’t resist bringing surrealist painter René Magritte into this thought stream by combining two of his images which both ask about the fundamental nature of reality, representation, symbolism and existential identity.

In branding, especially in branding dogs, I think the community is way too hung up on the past–and often an artificial past–in how we define and value our dogs. We turn them into symbols and representations and we place the story over the existential truth.

Conformation shows are very much about the painting of the pipe versus the pipe itself. The goal of a painting is to exhibit the skill of the artist, not to make a superior pipe. The painting just has to LOOK like a wonderful pipe. Then, as artists are want to do, trends and abuses turn into movements and in some epochs the art is realist, even romantic, other times it’s impressionistic and then downright absurd.

Conformation is all about the change, never about performance.

The trialists are also absorbed in the past, but in a different way; they are fundamentally against the evolution and repurposing of dogs. They find value in the antique nature of the breed and revel in stasis and reenactment. While a performance standard does speak to an existential truth (and this is why we don’t see the grotesque distortions we find from conformation artists), it doesn’t prevent the performance task from becoming obsolete or surpassed in popularity.

Trials are all about performance, never about change.

So what happens when we don’t constrain either of those variables and take a measure of what is produced in an existential, realist, and measured manner?

The Internet is for social networking and porn.

The Internet was funded by the Department of Defense for use by the military.  National defense and elite scholarship were the original use and designing factors governing its design.  Now, the military and elite institutions are taking more and more of their networks offline and spend fortunes putting up barriers to those that are still connected to the Internet.

In reality, the Internet is primarily for social networking and pornography, not national defense or scholarship.  An impartial observer who was not indoctrinated in what the Internet is supposed to be or what it was in the past would hardly notice the national defense and scholarship aspects and would declare it to be a massive undertaking which people use to convince others that they are having lots of sex followed closely by actually viewing images and videos of strangers pretending to have lots of sex.

Last year, social networking surpassed pornography as the most popular use of the internet and more social networking activity takes place over the Internet than any other outlet.  Likewise, pornography is the second most common use of the Internet and more people get their pornography over the Internet than any other source.

These are unintended and arguably unwanted developments in the use of the Internet, but the reflexive superiority of the task and the platform  are undeniable.  It’s not for education or defense, it’s for social wish fulfillment and fantasy.

Love and other drugs: Viagra and Ecstasy are far more popular for carnal pursuits than for their original medical uses.

While we’re on the subject of unexpected innovation for purposes of initiating or aiding sexual activity, here are three examples of other tools (all pharmaceuticals in this case) which have surpassed their initial use in pursuit of that goal.  Viagra was developed specifically to treat hypertension and angina, with zero thought or design given to a secondary use as an erection inducer.  It wasn’t until the drug made it to human trials that it was found to be useless for angina but effective for increasing blood flow to the penis.  That is now its primary use and it is the primary drug prescribed for that condition.

Methylenedioxymethamphetamine was first synthesized a century ago as an intermediary product in part of a Merck plot to plagiarize a successful Bayer drug used to treat hemorrhages.  Its psychotropic effects wouldn’t be appreciated for another six decades after it had been investigated as an appetite suppressant and decongestant like Ephedrine, and later as an analog to Mescaline in a study done by the US Army.  MDMA found its way to the streets by the 1970s and soon into the basket of drugs offered to patients by psychotherapists. Ecstasy was classified as a Schedule I controlled substance by the mid 1980s, but that didn’t prevent its rise to prominence as a recreational drug second only to Marijuana in popularity, passing Cocaine and Heroin as drug-of-choice for first illicit drug experience.

Latisse is a far more popular cosmetic than it was a medical treatment.

Bimatoprost (“Lumigan”) was a rather unremarkable member of a family of drugs (prostaglandins) used to treat glaucoma until it was discovered that a side effect of the drug was the darkening and thickening of the eyelashes.  Rebranded as “Latisse” the drug is now FDA approved for cosmetic use and is being sold as a beauty product.  Its value as a cosmetic has already far surpassed its use as a medicinal drug.  It is the only drug approved for cosmetic eyelash enhancement, so it currently dominates a much larger market than its previous incarnation as one of many treatments for hypertension in the eye.

This is not a phone. It's a clock with some extra features.

Perhaps the most obvious approachable and active nursery for useage drift is the cell phone.  It’s hardly a phone any more, as by any measure what used to be subordinate bonus features are now vastly more popular than the once sole raison d’être of the phone: to make voice calls.  Teens send 6 times as many text messages as phone calls and even the least likely to text adults still use that feature more than dialing calls.  The most popular use of the device is actually to tell the time though, and the ubiquity of cell phones has made the wrist watch an increasingly obsolete tool.  Applications and Games have recently surpassed Internet browsing and e-mail as the largest share of data bandwidth and now people spend more time listening to music on their phone than making phone calls.

We might call it a phone, but that’s hardly its main use anymore.  While there are still single purpose phones in the world, their use is dropping like a stone and the number of cellphone only households has surpassed the number of landline only households and the recession has caused many dual-phone households to ditch their landline to save money.  The landline will likely live on, but only at a fraction of its previous popularity and in instances where the downside of cell phones (reliability, battery driven) make them impractical.

A dog is what you make of it and more people are making sport dogs than working dogs.

All of these tools were manipulated by man into filling a niche use.  So too is the dog a man-adapted tool that has been continually manipulated to fill existing and new human niches.

So what IS a Border Collie then? By far its most popular use is as a pet. Not only does this use easily make up more than 90% of Border Collies, they are quite successful and good pets–easily a Top 10 breed and perhaps as high as Top 5.  This has probably been the case for over a century going right back to the very founding days of the breed as a trial dog. It’s an undeniable truth that despite having the goal of creating winning trial dogs, the majority of puppies in a litter never stepped on a trial field.  This is true for all competitive endeavors, it’s just that all the hype and branding comes from the minority use.

Among the fraction of Border Collies that are trained and compete, there are many times more Border Collies who play Frisbee, Flyball, Agility, and Obedience than have ever entered a sheep or cattle trial; and their ability in all these venues is exemplary.  There isn’t another breed that can hold a candle to the Border Collie at dog sports, they are so dominant that they have been given a Border Collies Only division to compete in.  Participation and growth in dog sports is robust and although some performance events started as a side show to conformation shows, they are now independently sustainable and there are numerous organizations that organize dog sport events that have no connection to and compete directly with the AKC.

This isn’t a “paradigm shift” in the formal sense, as the sport dog in no way precludes the use of the “working” dog despite surpassing it in popularity.  I’ve been accused of putting dog sport Border Collies forth as “the new paradigm” but I make no such claim. Not only is ‘paradigm’ so over-used as to be meaningless, the original definition required a true revolution in understanding such that the use or way of thinking before the shift was eclipsed and supplanted (think “the earth is flat” to “the earth is round;” when you accept the latter, the former is meaningless).

Sport dogs and working dogs can co-exist and the value of the breed stock is not mutually exclusive.  Creating pet and sport Border Collies is not a revolution, it’s a concurrent evolution.  The reality is such though, that the market and demands of the sport world are larger and more intricate than the working breeders can provide.  Thus, breeders can and will continue to breed to a sport and pet standard despite the moral cries from the sheeple that they should not do so.

This is not speculative advocacy on my part, projecting what I wish the reality were, it is a simple observation of the extant truth.

We know that ancient man was picking his teeth with small sticks at the exact same time he began to domesticate the wolf.

The modern toothpick began as a utilitarian tool used by the native Brazilians to clean their teeth. The idea to mass produce these twigs–which had theretofore been whittled by hand–came to a marketing genius named Charles Foster who witnessed their utility and decided he could “sell ice to the Eskimos” by bringing machined and standardized toothpicks to the Brazilians and the world. Today, Brazil exports more toothpicks than any other nation.

While there’s no evidence that chimps cultivated wolves as animal companions, the bond between humans and canids does extend back to our very origins. It is likely that after proto-man held that scrap of meat in the fire with a proto-toothpick, he threw the scraps to his proto-dog. And like the toothpick, dogs were crudely hewn objects of utility before they were standardized by the whims of fashion.

Though readily promoted by manufacturers, usage drift is more often created by consumers of a product. People are natural inventors, and they are constantly finding new uses for common objects of all kinds. The best ideas propagate quickly through the culture and then become embraced by manufacturers as their own. Before there were Q-tips, young mothers wrapped a bit of cotton around the point of a toothpick and used it to clean out baby’s ears and nose. This practice came to be recommended by ladies’ magazines and advice columnists, and led to the invention of the Q-tip itself.

At first, the hard wooden stick terminating in soft cotton swabs suggested the toothpick connection, but today’s Q-tip disguises its origins with a white paper body that blends almost seamlessly into the swab ends. The latest supply of Q-tips bought for our bathroom goes even further in removing the product from its ancestry and infancy. Except perhaps for the ironic admonition to “Keep out of reach of children,” there is no hint on the package that these were once made exclusively for babies. On this “vanity pack,” Q-tips are described as “the ultimate beauty tool.”

Thus, products that result from usage drift over time can ultimately assume an identity that gives little hint of their true origins and once-primary use. The mass-produced wooden toothpick that Charles Forster introduced to Boston in the 1860s has given rise to countless fads, uses, and spinoff products, all of which ultimately owe their existence to his marketing genius, whether we realize it or not.

- Henry Petroski, Stick Figure, Slate 10/31/3007

The process where a technology evolves from the early adopters into the majority often involves friction between the elite early adopters who covet their history with the technology and the exclusivity they have enjoyed. This is evident in the Border Collie world where those who use the dogs strictly for “work” claim to be the inheritors of the storied old ways and the comparatively new adopters who don’t herd or who see herding as a sport rather than a religion are blasphemous corrupters.

I see the broadening appeal of the Border Collie as another example of usage drift. Just like the toothpick, the Border Collie is a technology that has been shaped by growing popularity and changes in fashion. And just like the Border Collie, there is no “ideal” toothpick, despite the brand name that suggests otherwise.

Despite being a rather simple piece of technology, the toothpick comes in many forms and serves several uses. The tapered tooth pick, single pointed or double, barrel shaped for easy dispensing, or the broad flat Jordan for easy manipulation. Smooth, rough, or wax coated; dyed, painted or lacquered; mint flavored. Wooden, bone, plastic, metal, or bamboo; wrapped in paper, cellophane, or naked. Adorned with dental floss or even frilly plastic pompoms.

We use them to clean our teeth, to sample hors d’oeuvres politely, to adorn our drinks with olives or umbrellas, to test the moisture in the middle of cooking cakes, and to construct bridges for science experiements.

Just as there is no singular, ideal use for a toothpick, I don’t believe there is a singular perfect use for the Border Collie. Not even herding and especially not sheep trials. If society has progressed just fine calling the many varieties of small sticks, singularly and collectively the same name, I don’t see any reason to rename the Border Collie. Nor do I see a compelling reason to limit the diversity of the breed by forcing a genetic split by closing the registries or limiting participation to a select group based upon politics.

reprint

Hot Nun knows a species when she sees one. Obey the Sister.

After the smashing success of my Multiple Orcasms post which still brings considerable daily traffic to the blog from furries looking for orca and vore themed pornography, I couldn’t resist tiptoeing around cheeky references to bestiality once again; but this time the human interest in animal sex is strictly like-on-like and the link to pornography is in the tricky means of defining concepts that are both familiar and yet abstract.

Trying to define what is necessary and sufficient to designate a “species” is rather like the problem the US Supreme Court ran into when trying to define pornography.  In the decision for Jacobellis v. Ohio, Justice Stewart coined a now famous phrase when trying to draw a line between protected speech and unprotected obscenity:

In saying this, I imply no criticism of the Court, which in those cases was faced with the task of trying to define what may be indefinable… I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within [hardcore pornography]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.

Many definitions, while concrete, are rather relative and not absolute. Darwin failed to define species in his Origin of Species:

Nor shall I here discuss the various definitions which have been given of the term species. No one definition has as yet satisfied all naturalists; yet every naturalist knows vaguely what he means when he speaks of a species.

He goes on to say just how blurred that line can be:

I was much struck how entirely vague and arbitrary is the distinction between species and varieties.

The “species debate” is a problem that existed before Darwin and which continues today.  The current tone of the debate has been most significantly influenced by evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr whose definition of a species graces most modern textbooks:

species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations, which are reproductively isolated from other such groups

I had a laugh when I read Ernst Mayr’s essay “What is a Species, and What is Not?” published in Philosophy of Science in 1996:

The term ‘species’ refers to a concrete phenomenon of nature and this fact severely constrains the number and kinds of possible definitions. The word ‘species’ is, like the words ‘planet’ or ‘moon,’ a technical term for a concrete phenomenon. One cannot propose a new definition of a planet as “a satellite of a sun that has its own satellite,” because this would exclude Venus, and some other planets without moons. A definition of any class of objects must be applicable to any member of this class and exclude reference to attributes not characteristic of this class.

It doesn’t help Mayr’s point that the International Astronomical Union had no formal definition for ‘planet’ at the time of his essay or for a complete decade after it. When they did finally vote on one in 2006, the former planet Pluto got downgraded to a dwarf planet leaving every science textbook published in the preceding 80 years obsolete and violating Mayr’s apparent rule that one can not propose a new definition that would exclude an existing member of a class. Pluto was declared a planet upon its discovery in 1930 and now it’s not even the largest “plutiod”–that honor falls to Eris, which was discovered in 2005 and found to be larger than Pluto which prompted Astronomers to actually look at the definition of what makes something a planet versus something else.

If you take a moment to look around the blogosphere this week, you’ll realize that the uncertainty of this issue is present just beneath the surface of numerous topics of conversation:

Retrieverman asks if the Island Fox is a valid species which must be understood within the context of the greater Canid complex several species of which would violate the basic Mayr definition of a species, but his post on the Polar Bear is also framed by the species debate as genetic analysis shows that Polar Bears can be considered a variety of Brown Bear and the two can and do form fertile hybrids.

The Dog Zombie looks at Canid DNA to question the recipe of different flavors of “Canid Soup.”

Jess at Desert Wind Hounds picks up on the food metaphor at Dog Zombie and asks what the recipe is for a “purebred” and how one goes about creating one.  This is ultimately just a more zoomed in analysis of the species debate: how much distance in time, space, genetics and niche constitutes a different breed, a different type, a different landrace, or a different species?

Stephen Bodio asks the same question with a simple image comparison of two dogs.

Razib Khan shows that the species debate is applicable to humans, and the notion that Neanderthals or Denisovians were somehow not human falls when you realize that their genes are still in us (Border Wars is written by a 2.7% certified Neanderthal):

In my post below I argue that it’s most useful to reconceptualize “human” as an ecological niche, rather than a descent group. All the confusion as to whether Neandertals, or any other group of divergent hominins, were, or weren’t, “humans like us,” exists in the context of the idea that “humans like us” are a very specific and sui generis  cladewith special traits. I think “we” need to get a little off our high horse here.

You’ll notice that the notion of “niche” becomes more and more important as we realize just how blurry the lines between interfertile species really is.  Niche is what separates Polar Bears from Brown Bears and it’s also what separates Dogs from Wolves:

The co-evolution between social canids and primates is I think not a random chance event. To some extent I think “man’s best friend” was a necessary outcome of evolutionary forces. Barring the total extermination of one lineage or the other, some sort of cooperative relationship is I suspect something that will naturally reoccur. Dogs are not simply a specific derived lineage of wolves, they’re an ecological niche created by the existence of hominins with social complexity.

Dave at Prick-Eared has a post which documents another canid rapidly invading the very niche that once brought man and wolf together to co-evolve.

There are no hard and fast answers here, no absolute definitions, no minimum standards or list of traits that are both necessary and sufficient to differentiate one “thing” from another “thing” in a meaningful way.  This is the place where the objectivity of science meets the subjectivity of philosophy and those questions like “what is a dog” start to look a lot like “what is an ideal Afghan Hound.”

There are some questions that are worth answering “I don’t know and I probably never will, but that won’t stop the investigation.”

Inbred lab mice are so healthy you only have to keep them in a sterile bubble and wear biohazard getup just to watch them.

The Pure Blood Brigade™ (licensed for use from Jess Ruffner) will sometimes invoke laboratory mice as the go-to example of a perfectly healthy inbred population. Here’s a quote from NSDTR-apologist and accomplice to Dr. Claire Wade, Dr. Danika Bannasch:

I don’t know if you are familiar with inbred mice.  There are 100s of laboratory strains that are completely inbred- ie homozygous at every locus.  They breed prolifically and are healthy.  They are not living in the wild but neither are domestic dogs.

To verify the health of laboratory mice I went to Jackson Laboratory–the “most important supplier of lab animals to science“–and viewed their “Breeding Strategies for Maintaining Colonies of Laboratory Mice.”  The manual claims that the breeding strategies that are used to create inbred lab mice are:

“safe, reliable, economical, efficient, and ensure that the mouse strains produced are genetically well-defined.”

Notice that they don’t claim that the mouse strains produce healthy mice that live long and have good temperaments, they are just genetically well-defined (highly homozygous).  Here are snippets which hint at the deep underlying dysfunction that is found in inbred lab mice:

• Reproductive life span. Typically, laboratory mice can breed for about seven to eight months, producing four or more litters (Table 1). However, some strains produce only one or two litters, usually because strain-specific characteristics or mutant phenotype affect their fertility. AKR/J mice (000648) develop leukemia, and breeders must generally be replaced when they are about six months old. C3H/HeJ mice may stop breeding early because they have a high frequency of ovarian cysts and tumors. NOD/ShiLtJ (001976) females may develop diabetes when they are 12 weeks old, but their reproductive lives can be extended with foot pad injections of Freund’s Adjuvant.

• Fertility. Fertility of inbred strains varies. For example, whereas nearly all breeding pairs of C3HeB/FeJ (000658) mice are fertile, less than half of C57L/J (000668) breeder pairs are fertile.

Wild mice breed for up to 24 months. Laboratory mice can breed for only 7-8 months.

Wild mice can have 5-10 litters per year, so 10-20 litters over their two year reproductive lifespan. These lab mice have 1-6 litters, the most popular strains average 3-4 litters.

Average wild mouse litter size is 10-12 pups. The mean litter size of the top 12 most popular lab strains are: 5.4, 5.2, 4.5, 5.0, 5.6, 4.0, 4.7, 7.3, 7.7, 5.8, 6.4, 4.9; so about 5 pups.

• Birth defects in the pups. C57BL/6J (000664) mice tend to have more pups with hydrocephaly than do other strains. A/J (000646) mice tend to have relatively more pups with cleft palates, the incidence of which can be influenced by the uterine environment.

• Hybrid vigor. Hybrid mice tend to have more, larger, and healthier litters than inbred strains.

• Strain-specific behaviors. The aggressive behaviors of some strains and the poor mothering instincts of others affect breeding performance and pup survival. For example, SJL/J (000686) males are aggressive and attack their mates and offspring; NZB/BlNJ (000684) females are poor mothers.

Here we have pretty much the death knell for using lab mice as an excuse to inbreed dogs.  Aggressive behaviors and poor mothering are deal breakers for almost any decent dog breeder.  Birth defects in many breeds are at epidemic levels, and yet many breeders are so jaded they consider it normal. We should not consider it normal and those of us in healthy breeds should steel our spines against becoming such moral sellouts.

Oh, and hybrid vigor is real. We can reverse this.

Don't let outcross breeders tell you otherwise, small litter sizes are actually a bonus! Who needs those extra offspring, they are just a hassle.

• Mutations and transgene effects. Some mutations are embryonic lethal; some cause infertility or reduced fertility; some affect mammary gland function. For example the Tg(SOD1*G93A)1Gur transgene (also found in several strains) induces neurodegeneration. The severity of such effects depends on strain background.

If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time you should be well aware of the embryonic lethal mutations that are prevalent in certain breeds of dog.  Many of these have been identified because they associate with a marked phenotype change of interest such as merle or bobtail. How many more exist that do not have a visible phenotype?

• Feed. Some strains of mice have bad teeth, no teeth, or other phenotypes that affect their ability to eat grain pellets. These mice need special foods, such as ground or dampened grain.

Does this remind you of the poor dentition we see in several toy breeds and especially hairless dogs?

Females of some strains are poor mothers (e.g., NZB/BlNJ, 000684) or cannot nurse, and a few mutations, such as toxic milk (Atp7btx) and lethal milk (Slc30a4lm), render the mother’s milk harmful to her pups.

I wonder if those toxic and lethal milk mothers were intentionally bred to have harmful milk or if those are just known side effects of strains used for other kids of research.

Some strains are so screwed up they are only viable by transplanting the ovaries of the inbred mice into healthier females:

Some strains are best maintained by ovarian transplantation. Homozygous B6C3Fe a/a-Csf1op/J (000231) females fail to lactate, and homozygotes of both genders are extremely fragile. Therefore, we transplant ovaries from a homozygous (op/op) female into a recipient female of a histocompatible strain. To quickly expand the colony, the donor ovaries may be quartered and each quarter ovary transplanted into a ovariectomized recipient female. We also maintain B6.V-Lepob/J mice (000632) by ovarian transplantation because, though the females produce functional gametes, they cannot sustain a productive pregnancy. Additionally, we maintain colonies of B6CBA-Tg(HDexon1)62Gpb/1J (002810), B6CBA-Tg(HDexon1)62Gpb/2J (004601), and B6CBA-Tg(HDexon1)62Gpb/3J,(006494) by ovarian transplantation to extend the breeding lifespans of the females. Although these females produce viable oocytes for a long time, they develop a progressive neurological disease that renders them physically incapable of mating or sustaining a pregnancy.

Fantastically healthy, no?

Don't worry, not all inbred lab mice are satanic albino demons, some are really cute! And that makes everything ok.

But all is not lost, the manual provides some advice on how to maintain an outbred colony to turn to if your inbred strain crashes and burns.

Maintaining Outbred Stocks

The genomic diversity of individual outbred mice contrasts directly with the genetic identity among individual mice of an inbred strain. To maintain genetic diversity in an outbred colony, matings between related individuals should be avoided; however, some inbreeding may be inevitable over time in any relatively small, closed outbred colony.

Therefore, the following should be considered when establishing an outbred colony:

• Use numerous, genetically diverse founder mice

• Use a defined breeding scheme that is designed to minimize inbreeding: Several different outbred breeding program have been described (see Berry & Linder, 2007)

• While random breeding — using a random number table or computer program to select breeders — can be used, random breeding will result in occasional matings between closely related individuals

• Keep the colony at a minimum size of approximately 25 breeder males per generation

So if you’re interested in breeding dogs that burn out young, are riddled with disease, have nasty temperament issues, have trouble conceiving, develop horrible diseases young, etc., then believe that you too can develop an inbred strain and it’ll all turn out just dandy, just like those inbred lab mice.  Just be sure to buy yourself a nice dog bubble and some bio-hazard gear to wear around your dog while you keep it in a perfectly sterile environment after burying a truck load of its siblings and ancestors who died in the process of making your inbred little mess.